Believable

~ Laura ~ 1 Comment

I’ve been stuck on the sofa with an iPad in hand tweeting for the past three hours. Blasey Ford was very believable. Kavanaugh is in trouble.

She put forward all sorts of details that made her story ring true, including the fact that she heard the guys laugh after they messed with her. A group of cool, popular guys laughing after terrorizing a young, fragile girl is very believable. Quick flashback to several incidents in my high school hallway. I think I spent most of the first two years of high school avoiding certain guys, sometimes dodging into the bathroom to hide from them.

Kavanaugh is going to have a very, very hard time digging himself out of this. Someone on Twitter said that Trump is furious and stomping around the White House, because nobody told him that Blasey Ford was so believable.

The GOP’s independent prosecutor is making a hash of things, because there’s really not many holes in Blasey Ford’s story. Yes, she’s a fragile person, who has admittedly struggled with some mental health issues, but she’s a professional and her story is consistent and honest about the issues that she doesn’t remember. I don’t think we’re going to get anymore info by continued questions. I think we should just move to Kavanaugh.

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Tragedy

~ Laura ~ 9 Comments

Before we get all pundit-y gleeful about the upcoming Kavanaugh circus at 10, let’s remember that what we are witnessing is most definitely a TRAGEDY. Two people are about to be humiliated and tortured and only one person actually deserves it.

Ford is most likely truthful and accurate, but there is a chance that she’s not. I would feel much, much better if he had been voted out because of his position on Roe v Wade. That’s clean and neat. This isn’t.

You know what his high school calendar tells me, as someone with teenage boys? He’s been planning for greatness since he’s been a kid. Teenage boys almost never keep records like this. They don’t have the executive skills.

And notice how he simply writes “interview for Brown” on his calendar without a time? He isn’t reminding himself about going to the interview. He’s keeping record for future historians. And he saved his calendar.

And he put his exercise routine on his calendar. I’m only doing that in my 50s, and I used to be an athlete. He was a highly, highly, unusual regimented kid who completely exploded on weekends.

And now all those exploded weekends might undo all the careful planning during the rest of the week.

Now, he’ll either never have that history book about himself or he’ll get one with a very fat chapter with lots of horrible information.

And Ford herself seems to have been tortured by this high school experience, even considering moving to New Zealand to get away from hearing about BK.

Two people are about to humiliate themselves in public. This is so sad.

The Small World of Elites

~ Laura ~ 20 Comments

While on the treadmill at the gym this morning, I watched Willie Geist joke about his common high school with his guest, a political science professor with a new book, on MSNBC. I know all about that high school, because that’s where Jonah went and where we live. And my editor at the major magazine that I know well. I tweeted about it and now we’re all friends, too.

It’s a small world of elites.

I’m not quite sure what the main point of Flanagan’s article was, but she has some nice details about the insider culture of elite schools in the 1980s. It was very, very similar to life at my upper class suburb in the 1980s.

Dan Drezner has a post about how elites are rather clueless about the fact that they are elites and, thus, have no qualms about punching down.

It’s a tribal world of elites, where we protect each other and close ranks. My hubby would point out that this is a cave-man instinct. It’s also something that pissed off people who aren’t in the club. We’ve got to open the doors.

Nah to Kavanaugh

~ Laura ~ 14 Comments

I didn’t write a blog post late last week, because the universe did not need one more hot take on Brett Kavanaugh. But I also knew that nobody wanted to hear about anything else. I handed in an article last Thursday and really, really should be moving on the next one, but it’s not about the Supreme Court or party behavior from the 1980s, so there seems no point in writing it. I actually don’t want to publish anything until the circus is over one way or another, because nobody is going to read it.

Sigh. So, let’s talk about it.

I’m pretty surprised that we didn’t wake up to a letter from Kavanaugh withdrawing his nomination. It was a tough night for him, but a fun night to be on Twitter.

The latest was a New Yorker article that sort of found another woman with a bad story about Kavanaugh. And some tweets by the Creepy Porn Lawyer, Michael Avenatti, who said he some info on gang rapes.

Parties in the 1980s were booze filled — I suppose they still are. There was lots of bad behavior there. Ford’s allegations were extreme, and I would have been horrified if that happened back then. But behavior that was a couple of steps less violent happened frequently. I’m not sure that adults should be judged by teenage lapses in judgment.

The picture that we’re getting of Kavanaugh is that he was a sports-bro. A rich private school kid. James Spader in Pretty in Pink. A entitled golden boy who got the cheerleaders and school awards. I knew that type well. I was alternatively attracted to that type, mostly because they weren’t into me, and repulsed by them for the same reason.

The same age as Kavanaugh, I’m getting IMs from the committee for my 35 year high school reunion right now. They want me to come, but I’m on the fence. It’s not close enough to bop in for an hour and then escape. It will involve an overnight stay in a hotel, if I get a few glasses of wine. I’m not sure that I want to invest that amount of time. There are several people who are going who fit the mold of Kavanaugh, others are reformed and have become sweet and kind.

If Kavanaugh reformed, became modest, self-effacing, and apologetic, would you forgive him?

SL 736

~ Laura ~ 19 Comments


I handed in the first draft of an article this morning. I have no idea whether it’s good or not. It’s somewhere on the spectrum between “GENIUS!” and “SUCKS!” and the stress of waiting to hear the verdict from a new editor sent me outside doing laps around suburban blocks. Getting 10K steps is much better than my other vices for dealing with stress. So, yay me!

I hate being a cliché, but I monitored my steps using my Fitbit, while listing to the NYT podcast using the Spotify app on my iPhone which was strapped to my arm. On The Daily, Barbaro interviewed Caitlyn Flanagan about her recent article in the Atlantic. I ran into a neighbor who has a small business making home cooked meals for wealthy families where both parents have mega jobs in Manhattan. Yes, I’m not exactly a character on the Rosanne Show.

The media cycle is dominated by the Kavanaugh story right now. I won’t write a separate blog post about it right now. You’ll can keep up that conversation in the previous thread.

In meantime, let me you to other articles and topics.

Everything That You Know About Obesity Is Wrong

Breaking news – Ford won’t testify on Monday.

Why women don’t report rape.

Pig manure. Still not going to be a vegan. But ugh.

Photo: Sometimes my adorable family will meet up for brunch in the city.

 

Is Kavanaugh Done?

~ Laura ~ 67 Comments

Over the weekend, the Washington Post reported that Christine Blasey Ford, a professor and therapist from CA, accused Supreme Court Justice nominee, Brett Kavanaugh and a friend of assaulting her, while at a drunken party in high school.

Her story is highly credible in part because the details of her story are so familiar to many women who were in similar positions in the 1980s. Getting jumped by drunken guys happened a lot.

Is he done? Is it fair?